January 17, 2006—The world renowned King’s Singers, who are famous for a blended and balanced sound in repertoire that ranges from English madrigals to Freddy Mercury, will perform at Oberlin College on Friday, Feb. 10, at 8 p.m. in Finney Chapel. The program for this concert includes English renaissance madrigals, songs by Francis Poulenc, sacred music from Estonia, and an adaptation of the timeless legend of Tristan and Isolde.

Tickets for the concert, which is part of Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series, are $10 for students, $22 for those with an Oberlin College I.D. (faculty, staff, alumni, and parents), area educators, and senior citizens, and $26 for the general public. Tickets purchased at the door on the evening of the performance are an additional $3.

(Please note: Tickets for this concert are nearly sold out; call the Central Ticket Service box office at 440-775-8169 for further information.)

The CTS box office is located in the lobby of Hall Auditorium, 67 N. Main St. (Route 58), between the Oberlin Inn and the Allen Memorial Art Museum. Box office hours are Monday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m. Finney Chapel is wheelchair accessible and is located on the southwest corner of Lorain St. (Route 511) and N. Professor St., across from Tappan Square.

Founded at King’s College in Cambridge in 1968, the King’s Singers are one of the world’s most sought-after ensembles, delighting audiences with charm, wit, and incomparable musicianship. Ronald Broun of the Washington Post writes that the group of two countertenors, tenor, two baritones, and bass “can be likened to an expanded barbershop quartet steeped in the English part-singing vocal tradition.” He also praised one of their Kennedy Center performances as “technically breathtaking, luxuriously beautiful, and musically exact.”

The King’s Singers have performed in many of the major concert halls around the globe as well as such diverse venues as European cathedrals, Windsor Castle (a private concert for the Royal Family), the Hollywood Bowl, and Shea Stadium. In addition to countless a cappella recitals, the ensemble has appeared with the symphonies of Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Toronto.

Their all-encompassing repertoire, from medieval to renaissance, romantic to contemporary, folk to pop, also leaves room for new music, to which they are seriously committed. In the last three decades they have commissioned 200 works from a host of prominent contemporary composers, including Luciano Berio, Peter Maxwell Davies, Libby Larson, György Ligeti, Gian Carlo Menotti, Ned Rorem, John Rutter, and Gunther Schuller. Recently, the ensemble commissioned seven composers and poets to create works for The Oriana Collection, a compilation of world premieres presented at the 2002 London Proms in honor of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. This new collection was featured alongside a 1601 madrigal collection, The Triumphs of Oriana, released on EM Records and part of the Oberlin concert program. The ensemble has more than 110 recordings to their credit.

About the Artist Recital Series
Since the inception of the Artist Recital Series in 1878, more than 1,000 of the most acclaimed and accomplished musicians, conductors, orchestras, chamber ensembles, and composers have graced the stage of Finney Chapel. Stars of such international stature as Dave Brubeck, Alicia de Larrocha, Glenn Gould, Denyce Graves, Jascha Heifetz, Vladimir Horowitz, Yo-Yo Ma, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Isaac Stern, George Szell, and Eugene Ysaÿe, to name but a few, have performed under the auspices of the series.

Since 1919, the Cleveland Orchestra has appeared on the series every season for a total of 204 performances under the baton of such illustrious—and varied — conductors as Nikolai Sokoloff (38 times), Artur Rodzinski (25 times), George Szell (60 times), Robert Shaw, Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, Simon Rattle, Yoel Levi, Christoph von Dohnányi, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Jahja Ling, Robert Spano, Franz Welser-Möst, Mitskuko Uchida, and Steven Smith. More than an impressive "Who's Who," the list of artists and ensembles to appear on the series is an illumination of the best of serious music, spanning the late 19th century to the present.

The Artist Recital Series is sponsored by the Conservatory and the Friends of the Artist Recital Series. Media sponsorship is provided by 104.9 FM-WCLV, ideastream WVIZ/PBS and 90.3 WCPN, and Northern Ohio Live magazine. All programs and artists are subject to change.

About the Oberlin Conservatory of Music
After Sir Simon Rattle conducted the Oberlin Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Orchestra in December 2004, Plain Dealer music critic Donald Rosenberg wrote that the concert was “stamped by magnificence.” Rosenberg included the Oberlin-Rattle performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, which he described as “uncommonly rich in poetry and drama,” in his list of top 10 memorable events from the 2004 concert season.

Magnificence has come to be synonymous with all aspects of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, from its exacting standards for incoming students to the excellence in teaching and performance expected of its faculty and the notable careers of its alumni, who can be found performing in every major orchestra and opera house and with many of today’s acclaimed chamber ensembles.

Founded in 1865 and situated within the intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, Oberlin is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. An undergraduate institution, Oberlin is renowned internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber and has been called a “national treasure” by the Washington Post.